The Mutt Breeders
by ColMikeFuser
Summary: Postwar Panem is overrun by Muttations. Are they left behind from the 75th Hunger Games? Or is someone breeding them to build a new tyranny? Scientists and citizen-soldiers of Districts 12, 13, and 3 must respond to the threat, learning as they go. Medicine makers and gadget builders must fight to stay free. Characters owned by Suzanne Collins or by Kiwiwriter47 are not mine.
1. Chapter 1: Apoptosis

The Mutts of the Capitol

By Col Mike Fuser, P.A. (ret)

* * *

**Apoptosis**_ : The Scheduled Death of a Cell Within an Organism._

Tbe Buffalo armored fighting vehicle rolled slowly along a smoking block of ruined apartment buildings in the Capitol.

"Ell Tee, mutts at your ten o'clock!" called gunner Woolsey.

"Three lizard mutts at ninety yards, hold your fire," called Lt. Meredith Jackson. "Sir, the ride is about to get rough", she told me.

"Don't mind me, Lieutenant, just looking for my unit out here."

I was cramped into the front seat of the AFV, the Lieutenant commanding the vehicle at the wheel, and wedged between us, behind the fire extinguisher and the first-aid kit, was a trash can filled with Number 74A remote detonated sticky grenades. I snugged the seatbelt tighter around my waist and grabbed hold of the overhead mount assist handle for support. Sgt Lindsay Woolsey, in the turret seat, scanned 360 degrees around our position, and called "No Friendlies in sight."

"Engaging for capture," said Jackson, as she accelerated over a curb and across a debris-strewn playground.

The Lizard Mutts ran in a pack. This was news, for lizards. Natural lizards aren't social. These mutts are, for some reason. Also lizards aren't thermic. Natural lizards are asleep in the winter months. These mutts are wide awake, roaming outdoors, and hungry.

The mutts wheeled left as we pursued. We bounced through the snowy playground into an alley, the mutts running flat out, and the AFV gaining on them.

One mutt stumbled over a patch of ice and fell. Lt. Jackson drove over it, pinning it beneath the front left wheel. "Mason, you're up."

"Roger that." Soldier Johanna Mason dismounted the vehicle through the rear hatch, brandishing a diamond-edged axe, tricked out to the same weight and balance as the one she used in the Quarter Quell, this time with a metal matrix composite head made of armor plate. The newer kind of armor plate, that's reinforced with depleted uranium-carbide monofilament. Sputtered with carbon plasma to put down a diamond finish and laser polished to get it as sharp and as smooth as humanly possible.

She decapitated the snarling mutt with one swing. Lizard mutt hide was tougher than leather. It would make tool steel dull. It was partially bulletproof. Dr. Beetee Latier had made a damned fine axe for Mason. A little brute force is most helpful, with the right tools to deliver it.

Sgt. Woolsey climbed out of the turret seat, reached into the trash bin beside me, pulled out two sticky grenades and passed them to Mason, who stuffed one grenade in the dead mutt's mouth, the other between the hind legs, and remounted the Buffalo in a smooth motion, closing the hatch behind her and belting into the troop seat. Time from start to finish, by my watch, was eighteen seconds.

Had they kept running, like most wild creatures, the surviving mutts would have outrun us by eighteen seconds.

Instead, they turned at the sound of Mason's axe, and came straight at us.

Lindsay Woolsey, an impish grin on her face, called "Clear to the rear, Ell Tee."

Jackson turned to me and said, "Watch this, sir. Sergeant Woolsey figured it out yesterday, the same time as Sergeant Boggs from your unit did."

Jackson reversed the AFV down the alley back toward the playground, got about fifty yards and slowed. I grabbed my binoculars for a closer look.

Both mutts sauntered up to their dead comrade. One began eating the severed head, throat first. The other immediately went for the belly. The sight was amazing. Lizard Mutts are programmed to destroy their own dead.

Jackson flipped the Weapons Switch to HOT, and pressed the firing button on the steering wheel. Both grenades detonated on her signal.

And the carcass of one lizard mutt flew directly at us and struck our bullet - resistant polycarbonate windscreen with a thump.

"Crap," said Woolsey from the turret. "We're blind up here."

Lt. Jackson gave a disgusted look. "I would like to end this war today," she muttered.

Several pounds of maroon – red, lumpy, frothy stuff came out of the dead lizard mutt's rear end and ruptured guts, and smeared the windscreen.

Lindsay Woolsey climbed out of the turret seat. "Permission to decon the turret cam, ma'am?"

"Decon the turret camera and the windscreen. We can wash the rest of the mutt crap off once we return to base. And post an overwatch. I'm blind to the rear, without that camera," Jackson said, sounding mechanical. Doesn't sound like career officer, I thought. Or a Career Tribute, for that matter. She seems capable and commanding enough, but like she belongs somewhere else. She sounds like she can run things, but not…an army.

"Roger that. Cleaning cam and windscreen here, the rest when we RTB," said Woolsey.

Mason reached into another trash bin, this one full of rags, passed two to Woolsey and checked her own rifle to see if she had rounds in the clip. Mason dismounted out the rear hatch and climbed the running boards and ladder to the roof. She made some clunking sounds as she dropped into position, tummy to the armor, to watch our rear. Then she gave three sharp taps on the roof with her fist. On that signal, Woolsey followed her up the ladder with a water bottle and the rags. Jackson's HUD, short for "head up display," went from dark to red to blurry to clear. Lt. Jackson panned the camera 360 degrees, getting a brilliant picture of the soles of Mason's boots, the left of which had a chunk of mutt crap stuck to the toe and instep. Woolsey reached into the picture with a clean rag and wiped the mutt crap off Mason's boot. Mason said, "That tickles, Sergeant."

"It makes you stink like mutt shit, too, soldier." Mason giggled. Woolsey did too.

Jackson and I resisted the urge to laugh. Just in case we had to holler at them to get back inside. Somebody has to stay aware at all times. Right now that was us.

Peering around a big lump of maroon mutt poop, I got a good look at the remains of the three lizard mutts.

"Lieutenant, I count three heads."

Jackson panned the camera forward and checked her HUD.

"Yes, sir, I make out three heads as well."

I was quite sure that the maroon color of their fecal matter, meant these mutts had been eating raw meat. Likely Capitol citizens, maybe our fellow rebel troops. Definitely not cooked meat taken from the Capitol's trash.

"Would you have waited to return to base if it was a hot day in summer?"

"Sir, I probably would. There's no smell in here, with the air filtration system running," Jackson said.

"Your crew is pretty quick. Been together long?"

Jackson seemed to think for a moment. "Johanna joined us our third day in the Capitol. She lost a friend to lizard mutts. So she begged some scientist in Special Defense to get her a job hunting them, and he pulled some strings and got her sent here. Lindsay Woolsey is with the armored infantry because she's a crack shot. And she's tiny enough to fit in the turret of a Buffalo AFV. She's been promoted three times. She's been my gunner since General Gray started down the Appian Way. Knock on wood," said Jackson, tapping her fist on her forehead. "She started as a private, and made lief-corporal by Day Five of the Battle. She saved us from an antitank rocket by shooting it down with the fifty. She's quite a shot, and I know some good shots. She made sergeant in the counter-attack, when we were rear guard and had to hold Lewis' Bridge or lose a third of the rebel army." Doesn't sound like an officer giving a report, I think. Too literate. Too many words.

I nodded. If I knew Meredith Jackson well enough to confide in her, I'd repeat the ugly conversation I'd had with Col. Boggs, the last time we both had an hour off duty. General Gray, a political appointee who had defected from District Eleven, where he was Head Peacekeeper, considered himself the equal of Napoleon. Col. Boggs said that his actual command abilities were on a par with Napoleon's achievements at a battle called Waterloo, where Napoleon had been utterly shattered.

Gray supposedly came perilously close to losing his entire army, when a coup de main by enemy armored units following the railway line, nearly retook the bridge to District Seven, which his parachute force had gained at immense cost. Had that counter-stroke been successful, it would have cut his supply line and left him surrounded. Snow in the mountains grounded our air support during the first day of battle. It was quick work by the heroes of the rear guard unit with whom this quiet lady had served, who kept the enemy from reaching the bridge, until air support could bomb them to a standstill.

They were outnumbered four to one by AFV's and had to dodge 155mm copperhead rounds from five main battle tanks. They made good use of the terrain, communicated amazingly well, and used the mountainous terrain to extend their guns' range, but stayed mobile. The force avoided taking much damage, and kept the enemy force pinned in a canyon below, until the weather cleared and our pilots had at them.

One of my former students from Thirteen, a captain named Hawthorne, paid attention during weather class and remembered that the dry snow on top of a mountain, does not compact as well as the wetter snow that falls down in the canyons, and he reminded all the Buffalo commanders in the rear guard, to stay high and keep moving, because the enemy below, got stuck in the mushy ice and could not move well. And all of these tankers were bright enough, to learn Hawthorne's snow lesson over our radios, without the enemy figuring out what they were talking about.

The bridge held, the Capitol lost half its AFVs and all of its main battle tanks, and Gray took the credit for the win. But his absence may be the sole reason that he wasn't defeated. We then had all seven of our tanks, the enemy had none, and we rolled into the Capitol against heavy resistance. It needs to be written up as a textbook study in tactics. Capitol survivors were convinced that our force was larger than theirs, solely because our armored infantry made good use of tactical deception, and they were tactically deceived.

I never got to speak with Boggsy again. He got killed making a propaganda film that we didn't need. And I miss the son of a bitch.

So I changed the subject. It's a survival skill.

"Where are you from, Lieutenant?"

"District Eleven, sir," Crap. Probably a Gray crony, I guessed. Gray's whole staff were all his old and new cronies. But you couldn't say bad things about him, because he was winning the war. Singlehandedly, according to Plutarch Heavensbee's propaganda, if you read that stuff. At least those fliers made good toilet paper, I thought.

"Ever see snow there?"

"Not often, sir. It had to get very cold. Sometimes it did." Her voice trailed off. She was clearly touching on something personal. Her voice tightened.

"How did you learn about powder snow in the mountains?"

"My top instructor back in the officer training class told us some stories about wars of the past, to explain the battles we are facing now. It helped build up morale," Jackson said. "He talked a lot about old wars. He used to teach military history and tactics to Peacekeepers. So he'd tell us about battles like Anzio and Austerlitz."

I'd ask Hawthorne to tell me the story sometime, since he wasn't about to get credit for it here. "Speaking of axes, I remember making Mason's axe."

"Sir?"

"My office partner, Dr Beetee Latier, worked in the Special Defense Lab In Thirteen, that I was commanding, right up until this mutt situation got out of hand and we all got sent here to spearhead the offensive. We built Mason that battle axe, so she could use it in the Battle of the Capitol." Dummy. Keep it to yourself that it was for a propaganda film we didn't need. "She got red-flagged by a medical issue that turned out to be unimportant" (meaning the thought of killing Snow made her unable to follow orders, which is now a non-issue because the humans stopped fighting and the mutts are just getting started) "and I'm sure Beetee Latier put in a word for her."

"Yes, sir, I noticed that she was very dedicated to the mission." Was I imagining, or was Jackson also making thoughtful pauses as she spoke, weighing the words she could utter? If she was in that rear-guard action, crony or not, she knows what sort of crap Gray is made of. There had better not be a war, with him in command of it, or the Republic is finished.

"Mason never mentioned why she shakes all the time, sir. She didn't want to talk, and I didn't want to ask." She paused quietly. "I'm not a journalist, although I do know one." She smiled slightly, leaving the comment hanging.

"I'm not a medical doctor, Lieutenant, but as I understand it, Mason was held prisoner in the Capitol and got tortured with electric shocks, which screwed up her nerves. Commander Aurelius medicated her with something at our Infirmary, which keeps it manageable. And there was some concern over whether she could obey orders quickly enough to be any help invading the Capitol. Although I must say, your crew moves very smoothly and do not need a lot of supervision to get their duty done. I didn't even notice the shaking until you mentioned it." And I'm not going to mention the repeated rapes, the disruption of anything resembling sleep, and the decision to use her to provoke Soldier Mellark to stop empathizing with Katniss Everdeen so that they could reprogram him to target her as a mutt. Not because of the War Crimes trials that would enquire into the evils of Coriolanus Snow's regime.

But because the assassination of the Mockingjay that the Capitol planned, meant that the enemy had at least one mole, one agent concealed among us, whom we trusted as our own. The hunt for the Mole was Strictly Top Secret. The only way that the Capitol would have spent months torturing Mason and Mellark, was if they knew we would raid the prison and rescue them. Which required at least one spy, to tell the Capitol what our thinking was, about coming to raid the prison. And probably to plant that idea in our heads in the first place.

Knowing Snow's history, our inclination was to presume Mason and Mellark dead. And certainly to inform the Capitol to weaken their grip on the prisoners, just enough for us to carry out the raid, required a spy. Guesswork would not have gotten the job done. If the Capitol did all that, we have no idea what this enemy might do. Until Snow is put to death, any mutt outbreak, like today's, could be cover for an attempt to break Snow out of prison. Or to replace Snow with someone worse, who is yet hidden in the shadows.

This latter case is our biggest worry. A hidden enemy who expected the revolution. Who planned to use our revolution to create just enough disruption so that they could seize power. An enemy worse than Snow would be quite fearsome, indeed. Capitol citizens seemed silly and harmless, yet somehow they managed to rule us for seventy-five years. It is hard to imagine that they all are as harmless as they look. Some, undoubtedly, have ambitions to rule as Snow had, and his coming trial and execution are their chance of a lifetime, to seize power. Stupid opportunists will emerge spontaneously and we'll deal with them as they emerge. Really clever opportunists have been planning to take over Snow's regime, since Snow first began to stink of blood and roses. Some might be unhappy with our vision of a federation of the Districts, with an elected government.

Jackson interrupted my worrying.

"Thank you, sir. We're the Buffalo Soldiers. We keep moving on." Well, Ms. Jackson certainly has a grasp of morale-building phrases. When uncomfortable silence is felt, she fills it with a confidence-building statement. I guess "Buffalo Soldiers" refers to her vehicles. May as well find out.

"I assume that 'Buffalo Soldiers' refers to your vehicles?" I ask.

She straightens, if that's possible. "No, sir," she says quietly. "It refers to something I learned about military history from my instructor…about the all-black regiments on the Old West. The Native Americans they fought called them 'Buffalo Soldiers.' So I adopted that for my particular unit. It works."

I'm not sure what the terms "Old West" and "Native Americans" mean, so I think I'll shut up right here. Clearly Ms. Jackson is some kind of bookworm-turned-warrior.

Woolsey and Mason finished cleaning the crap and lizard blood off the windscreen and turret, doused their rags with fuel and lit them afire. The mutt crap didn't look like crap, but it certainly stunk like crap.

Just then Jackson spotted a squad of soldiers walking down the alleyway toward us. Not walking. Marching. They were in double file, weapons shouldered, as if this was a parade. And they were singing one of those awful parade-ground songs from Thirteen, that Commander Talbot favored.

"Canned milk is the best of all

No tits to pull nor hay to haul!

No shit to shovel nor straw to pitch.

Just punch a hole in the sonuvabitch!"

"Sound off!"

"One, two!"

"Sound off!"

"Three, Four!"

"One, Two, Three, Four!"

"Squad halt!" That clear voice was familiar. I'd heard it on every visit to Col Boggs' quarters, since the days when we we were freshly-commissioned Lieutenants in District Thirteen. I had heard that voice grow, from a child's playfulness, to a young soldier's determination, to a grown woman's seriousness. And it now had the slight tremor of a daughter in mourning. Sergeant Laecania Boggs, six days after losing her father to a booby trap, had found my lost squad, safe and sound.

Woolsey saw the squad approaching and waved a greeting, then walked out to meet them. She and Laecania shook hands in greeting, gesturing at the carcasses. Mason unsheathed her axe and removed the ears from the mutt that struck our windscreen, and presented them to Laecania Boggs. They assisted her in wrapping the rest of the bloody mess in waterproof bags, and brought them aboard for the genomic study we were running in Thirteen. We'd had a shortage of mutt organs to dissect and study, and thanks to Woolsey, we knew why. The damned lizard mutts that ate Finnick, destroyed their dead, purposely. It was programmed into their DNA somehow. Which explained why we recovered no remains, from the tunnel where Finnick had died in a rear-guard action. The mutts ate the corpses. They ate their own dead and wounded. And then they wandered off in search of other targets. That was quite a feat of eating, even by prewar Capitol standards.

"Lieutenant, would you kindly give these soldiers a ride back to base?"

"Certainly, sir," she said, still quiet. Distant and reserved, I thought. Almost dispassionate. She had golden brown skin, straight hair, and her uniform concealed what seemed to be an attractively formed, if somewhat muscular body. What they sometimes called a "jock-ette." Maybe a runner, I thought. What appeared to be headphones for a music chip and player was jammed in her front pocket. Probably company for her when she hit the running trail.

I tried to open her up a little. "Anything special on that chip, lieutenant?" I asked.

She patted the chip. "A couple of songs by Bruce Springsteen head the list, sir."

Him I'm vaguely aware of. His music is popular with some of the grunts. He's hundreds of years gone, but his working-class tone speaks for them. "Which ones?"

"'Rocky Ground' and 'If I Should Fall Behind,' sir."

The former I know. I've heard it sung by grunts in the evenings. Very appropriate to this war. The latter, I don't know. "What's that about?" I ask.

"It's…it's the song my boyfriend and I sing, sir. It's our song." She smiles slightly. "It's a promise we made to each other. If I should fall behind, wait for me. We promise to meet up after the war."

"I'm sure you will," I say, trying to sound sincere. But I'm not doing that good a job. How the hell can I promise that to anybody?

Forget it. Drive on.

"Let's saddle up, lieutenant."


	2. Chapter 2: Chain of Command

Landing Zone Three was once a golf course. Atop a rocky ledge, a mountain to the north, a ninety - foot escarpment to the south that overlooked the Presidential Palace, its eighteen holes once stretched from west to east. Some holes grew larger in the fighting. Two notable shell craters and bits of a Buffalo loaded with bombs that had blown up, surrounded the remains of a gazebo where antebellum Capitolians were once served drinks by Avoxes, as they paused from their efforts to play the tenth hole. Command chose it for a base near the Snow regime's former digs, with no tunnels beneath, and the Seventh Engineers, commanded by my old student Jacob Talbot, had moved the bigger chunks of scrap aside, filled some craters, and opened a runway that allowed our hoverplanes to get airborne with heavier loads. I wasn't here to see Jacob, as his written report on the mutt find was brief but thorough. I was meeting his dad, Levias.

Commander Levias Talbot was an old schoolmate in Thirteen. We'd both been in love with Portia Black, now a noted biophysicist and a clinician in orthopedics. Portia married him. She was the smartest person I ever knew. A bookworm warrior like Lt Jackson and every damn bit as maddeningly mysterious. Levias was second to our intelligence chief, then General Paylor snatched him up, immediately after President Coin promoted her past all of us colonels and made her a general to rival Plutarch's favorite, Army Chief of Staff General Cassius Gray. Command sent me here with half a puzzle and I hoped Levias had a few more of the missing pieces.

I was seated in what had been the clubhouse bar room, which was now a self-service buffet for the officers and clerks. Two elderly avoxes re-stocked the food from out of the mobile kitchen that General Paylor had improvised, and also cleaned the place for us. They kept doing their old jobs because they had nowhere to go. The Army could feed and house them but couldn't pay them. Hell, the Army couldn't pay anybody. Most folks from Thirteen were just learning about money. We didn't use it at home.

Everything in Thirteen was rationed. If it was someone's turn to scrub dishes in the kitchen or tend cows in one of our underground farms, they did their duty or got a kick in the ass for goofing off. We all longed for the day we'd free ourselves and move above ground. I even used that longing, to motivate my students when I taught survival. The liberty to choose what to cook and how much to eat, and when to fall asleep, was exhilarating. The more spoiled they got by the thought of actual freedom to choose, the sooner they wanted to get this war won and live freely.

This clubhouse was now Paylor's headquarters. Paylor was well-liked in the districts she had liberated, because she did her best to understand the local micro-economies and minimize the damage done to them. It might be a black market stall to a Peacekeeper, but for some vendor and their customers in the district, it meant survival. She refused to send away any Capitol citizen who would work for food, just as she had done for the citizens of District Eight, and when cracking The Nut in District Two. Many of those starved survivors whom she fed, got strong enough to march with her and they enlisted. With Snow in custody, we didn't want more troops at the moment, but she was setting a fine example of what public service actually is, and that made me proud to be a part of it.

I was nibbling on some celery and eying the turkey sandwich I'd made, when Captain Hawthorne got my attention.

"Colonel, the General wants to hold this meeting in her office, and she said to bring your sandwich. "

I followed him, my cap off and stuffed through my belt. This sounded bad. Paylor had just taken over my operation, I guessed.

"Gale, Mike, have a seat!". Paylor's voice was both commanding and inviting. Her cap was rolled up and stuffed under her left epaulet. Square-jawed, square-shouldered with a compact rack, short legs and a powerful ass, she resembled either a main battle tank or a gnome-like mining pony of ancient times, except for the lively green eyes framed by close-cut raven hair. Eyes that flashed intelligently with wordless recognition. She wasn't big on salutes, except when someone was too dumb to realize they'd screwed up, in which case she would stand the dummy at attention and administer a reaming of the ears, that left the cocky fool quivering with indecision, after shocking said fool with her knowledge of his personal secrets. After which, fools would salute. Or stand on one foot while reciting the names of all the dead tributes of the 72nd Hunger Games. Or whatever else would halt the flow of sheer terror and get them out of Paylor's office.

"Is Portia out of the Infirmary yet?". Paylor was known for chewing people out with two sentences. She just wasted one to ask about Portia Talbot.

I kept her folksy District Ten tone. And politely waited to hear what I'd screwed up today.

"Doctor Talbot was gimping around the lab nicely when I flew here yesterday. She volunteered for the Mutt Genome project when Command announced it and we're glad to have her on it. And she got a message off to their older son at Seventh Engineers, asking for mutt organs wherever found."

"I never found out and I didn't want to pester Levias, but did they save both her legs?". This is serious, I thought. She used two sentences already, and still has not gotten to the issue.

"Her understudy, Doctor Diego, got the kneecap and joint to grow back together."

"Glad to hear it. The shitheads, I mean, Peacekeepers, killed most of her medics and all of her patients when they firebombed the hospital in Eight. She was checking a load of meds and surgery supplies on an arrived hoverplane, and one of the bombs rolled the plane on top of her and looked to have smashed her legs all to hell. I had a view of the whole scene, while Gale here and the Mockingjay were shooting arrows at the bastards. Wasn't Portia a runner once?"

"At one time, Portia could outrun me in a sprint. I hope she heals up enough for a rematch by September."

"And who do I thank for downing six enemy hovercraft that day, with arrows?"

"That would be Dr Beetee Latier, with a lot of advice on arrows from Gale Hawthorne here, and some confusion I introduced but which they ignored. Beetee made some outstanding wire out of graphene sheet, clad with copper. We snipped it in short pieces and embedded it in Xyex. When the Xyex detonates, those bits of hyperconductor short out anything electrical that they penetrate. The superconducting magnets that provide the magnetic levitation, get no power and the craft drops like a stone."

"Speaking of stones, Lieutenant Talbot isn't here, but I would like to know why it took him half a day and two thousand tons of rock excavating, when my deployment order to him, was to turn off the valve of a broken water main and RTB."

Here it comes, I thought.

"I received a copy of his report to you and it seemed clear what he'd found. "

"Mike, I like Portia and I've seen her work. She's an exceptional physician and scientist. She patched me together once and helped hundreds of my troops. But the problem the medical branch have, is they don't always follow the chain of command. And now her kid is spreading that disorder into the Engineers, because she asked him for some mutt guts."

Dummy. I didn't reply about Talbot's report, and Paylor is pissed about being circumvented and probably also thinks Command is hiding something from her. Ordering troops under her command, to go off on side missions that make them unavailable for tasks she needs done. I never intended to do that. I doubted if Portia or Levias or Jacob Talbot intended to do that. And Charlie Foxtrot, that's precisely what we made happen, without even trying. Before I could make my lips move, Paylor saw the recognition cross my face and her eyes flashed. I was getting my ear reamed out momentarily.

"I know a wee bit about medicine. I was a doctor of veterinary medicine, before the war. I reported to the Business Adminstrator in District Ten. I also was on call at the Capitol for their horses. I did a lot of flying and I served in the Underground, before I came out to Thirteen for officer's training. I know what it's like, to want to help, but make things worse by trying. Gale, would you please dim the lights? "

"Yes ma'am.", Captain Hawthorne affirmed, reaching for the light switch.

"I have some video here, that was shot by a special service unit, using a gadget you invented, Mike. It's called an Arrowplane."

I felt my face getting hot. Paylor hadn't even raised her voice.

"It was a bright bit of engineering work."

Now I was starting to perspire. A letdown was coming at the end of all this praise and I was sure it would feel awful. And then I opened my big mouth.

"Captain Hawthorne was a big help on the Arrowplane, General. He got the ultraflywheel design worked out, from his previous work with traps and snares, ma'am. "

"Yes, Mike, I'm familiar with that. Two counter-rotating flywheels spin as propellers. The craft is shot from a longbow with the flywheels spinning. You spin them up with a solar panel or the battery pack of a Buffalo before you shoot it into flight. It stores enough kinetic energy in the flywheels for a four-minute flight. It steers with the remote controls on any officer's Holo. And those counter-rotating propellers give the camera an exceptionally stable ride, even in the worst wind conditions. Gale, roll the video, please." Paylor sounded polite and mechanical, as if to rush through this talk.

The desktop Holo display flickered a blur as the Arrowplane shot from the soldier's bow and then the image came into focus. I saw snow falling, smoke, ashes, buildings. Then I recognized the Presidential Palace.

The officer who shot this video was gliding the Arrowplane in a lazy loop over the Palace, maintaining an overwatch. Some shitheads were staring over the palace walls, at the sight of all seven of our main battle tanks rolling into position, facing the north lawn.

Clearly this was Waterloo for Coriolanus Snow.

If they each fired a single 155mm round, the Presidential Palace would be rubble in less than a second. The last three rounds to detonate, would bounce the rubble around and make the pieces smaller, because nothing would be standing by then. Each tank probably had eighteen of them stowed in the turret and main deck ammunition compartments.

The shitheads on the north lawn weren't firing. They weren't surrendering. They were just gawking, as if hoping this was a nightmare from which they would awaken.

At the south lawn, shitheads were stripping off their white uniforms and putting on civilian clothes. There was a large group of civilians, many wounded, most of them children, in the street outside the south gate of the palace, behind some barricades. Shitheads were stealing clothing from the wounded to blend into the crowd, and they were escaping. A small force of infantry, probably part of a special service force, advanced stealthily on the south entrance, using the deserting shitheads as cover. Suddenly an invisible hovercraft, flying nap of the Earth, decloaked and came to a halt over the south gate. The officer commanding the advancing rebels held up a fist. The troops froze in position, perhaps expecting the craft to open fire on them. Instead, the hovercraft dropped a lot of shiny objects on parachutes, rotated, and was recloaking as it flew away to the south. A cloud of smoke and dust went up from the crowd of civilians.

When the dust cleared, there was blood and gore on the ground. Severed limbs were strewn about. The rebel infantry at the scene got disorderly and some ran toward the explosion scene. The officer was shouting something but some of the troops kept running toward the blast scene. Then a group of uniformed medics came running into the scene. Heedless of any danger, they waded right into the sea of wounded. My chest tightened as I recognized the young girl leading the charge.

Her mother and she had shared the apartment, next door to my own room in District Thirteen.

It was Primrose bleeping Everdeen, running directly into harm's way to help the wounded. My eyes started to moisten. What if a shell overshot the palace, I worried. They're too fucking close.

The officer sent someone with the chevrons of a sergeant across the street. The sergeant grabbed a lief-corporal and pointed at something. A shiny object with a parachute attached, partly camouflaged with the blood of the dead and wounded. The sergeant and the lief-corporal both began shouting and waving their arms, motioning away from the scene. Some soldiers turned and began running in retreat. I thought I could see the officer's lips moving, saying "Fall Back", as he waved furiously at the soldiers to return toward him. I began to notice shapes on the ground. Bloody parachutes and containers. Some of the silvery objects that fell from the hovercraft were still intact, maybe. The objects exploded in a bigger puff of smoke, that swallowed the sergeant, the lief-corporal, the medics, the wounded, and most of the retreating soldiers. Something shiny flew toward the camera. The picture went to cubes and the screen went blank.

My chest hurt.

I tutored wee Prim on her chemistry. She was a smart little creature, learned two years' worth of university - level chemistry classes in five months. While also pulling shifts in the Infirmary, tending to our wounded. She was almost...almost the daughter I might have had if I'd persuaded Portia to marry me. Damn. That's why I'm single?

And Portia. Whose patients got burnt alive in the firebombing of the hospital, during the Battle of Eight. She was in one hell of a shape when she was rescued. She came in with Boggsy and the Mockingjay. Boggsy's face was smashed in. Katniss Everdeen, the Mockingjay, Prim's big sister, had a six-inch hunk of sheet metal blown into the back of her thigh, between the psoas and biceps femoris muscles, and had bled something fierce, but insisted on using her bow as a crutch, hobbling into the Infirmary. "Don't let the bastards see you coming out prone", she said.

Well, Portia fucking well came out prone. When a six-ton hoverplane rolls onto a kneecap and the leg damned nearly detaches, the person isn't standing up anytime soon. That plus she got burnt, second-degree, when a firebomb ignited her pants. I remembered Portia waking up with a scream after surgery. And brave little Prim titrating Portia with morphling. Just enough morphling to take the edge off the pain, so Portia could visit with her young son David, and me. Get things in order, show Levias and Jacob she's alright, before Plutarch Heavensbee broadcasts video of her pants on fire and her legs getting crushed.

The hell was I doing in the Infirmary that day? Right. Beetee had a chest pain and passed out in the lab. I was there to see how he was. And then the casualties from District Eight came in.

Today, hell. Lt Jackson wishes the war was over today. Why couldn't it have ended six days ago?

"Mike, do you need a minute?", asked General Paylor sweetly. As sweetly as my mother did, when I was a farmboy in Nine. Before the fucking shitheads shot my father's left eye out the back of his skull, and made Mom their damned Avox. And I escaped to Thirteen alone, got enrolled in school and was put to work farming. And became buddies with Boggsy and Portia.

Mom. Dad. Boggsy. Portia. Prim. Prim's mom. Does everyone I love have to die for these bastards?

"I'm sorry, General, my mind was wandering.".

Portia's married and wounded, not dead.

Shit.

Prim's mom must be in a state. Maybe envies her dead husband, who didn't suffer through this week.

"Enlighten us, please, on where your mind went, Mike."

"Mrs Everdeen must be devastated right now".

"I am sure she is. So what can we learn from this video, so we have a reason to thank her for losing a child who served with us?"

"Medics need to follow the chain of command. If they'd asked us if it was safe, we might not have sent them in.", I said softly.

"And?"

"If people look up to you, and you do something dumb, they may follow. Like the lief-corporal who charged that gate. Like Soldier Everdeen and the medics."

Hawthorne suddenly blushed beet red. Perhaps he remembered stepping on Boggsy's face and running with the Mockingjay into Paylor's gun emplacement, during the Battle of Eight. Boggsy told me the story and his decision not to report the incident to Coin, who might have had Hawthorne courts-martialled for insubordination, and shot. What drove his decision was the fact that the Capitol lost seven hovercraft in that raid. He saw Everdeen and Hawthorne down all seven. Letting Hawthorne have the reputation of a hero, instead of a dead headstrong fuckup, gave Plutarch a wildly improbable story to tell...that two kids shooting arrows, downed six hovercraft and disabled a seventh, whose pilot screwed up and crashed it into a warehouse. Five arrows, seven kills. The Capitol would never believe that story and would scour their reconnaissance photos for some secret weapons system we were using. Which would keep them distracted while Paylor rolled up the enemy in Eight, and Gray started preparing for the big push from Seven.

"Mrs Everdeen lost a daughter. But Primrose led the charge and forty-one medics followed. There was one survivor. The wounded would have been killed by the bombs. The shitheads who were steaaling civilian clothes from those wounded, and escaping, would have been killed by the bombs. But now, fifteen families, who had a son or daughter in the infantry, lost them, because Lief-Corporal Ryan ran out, without orders, and they followed. Sergeant Raybee got killed in the cluster fuckup, trying to unsnarl it. He leaves his family behind in Thirteen. And forty families lost a son or daughter who trusted the younger Everdeen, and followed her into the kill zone. And got killed by the bombs. Now, Mister Fuser, what have you learned about lizard mutts, that requires a meeting with my intelligence chief?"

O

Feeling about six inches tall, I spoke.

"General, the Lizard Mutts have been genetically engineered to destroy their own DNA when any are killed. They drop what they are doing and eat their own dead. This makes it very difficult to discern from any DNA we do recover, how the mutts were designed. We do not know their numbers. We do not know how they breed. Or if they breed. We do not know how they were intended to be controlled. We do not know who was controlling them when they were released. And we do not know what controls them now".

"Or whom.", added Paylor. She sounded like she had already figured this out and was waiting for me to learn it.

"That is correct, General. The Lizard Mutts may be roaming freely around the city, following their instincts, with no one now in control. Or conceivably, someone may be steering them toward some target, using systems we do not yet know about. My orders came from President Coin. I am to answer those questions as soon as possible."

I felt like someone else was speaking for me because my feelings were trapped in the battle video I just watched. I trained Ryan. Ryan was a crack shot and an amazing field cook. Raybee was gutsy as they come, a veteran special service soldier who helped the young soldiers keep it together. I had them both on a training exercise outside Thirteen, survival and advanced orienteering, the day the Capitol launched a bunker missile attack and air strikes on us. They both had a few hovercraft kills, and we captured three shitheads who survived, which got us updated maps of pods and access codes for the raid on Snow's torture chamber. We took damage, but zero casualties. We also learned that the Capitol was trying to map our tunnels, using the reflected sound from the bunker missile explosions. In fact, we learned that because that nervous little shit Ryan, noticed an object attached to a small parachute, and I went out to inspect it, and suspected it to be a sound sensor. We retrieved six more of them before the missiles struck, and Beetee rigged them to play music back to the Capitol. Instead of the sound of us getting bombed, they heard an ancient song about a hummingbird heartbeat sung by someone named Katy Perry.

But before that, Ryan also thought there were Capitol troops running around in our woods and she shot at me when I approached. I could be dead now and have missed the whole thing. Instead, I chewed her out for firing at a target she couldn't see. And...Paylor was saying something important.

"Levias Talbot couldn't make this meeting, because I assigned him a different problem that could be related. Lights, please, Mister Hawthorne."

Paylor's holo came back up, with the image of the hovercraft parachuting bombs onto the wounded civilians and the fleeing shitheads. She made a hand motion to enlarge the image, zooming in on a dark spot above the pilot's seat. The image grew darker and more grainy as she magnified it. But the words came into focus.

"Alma Coin, President, Provisional Republic of Panem."

"Levias Talbot confirmed two facts thus far. Firstly, those are the markings of President Coin's personal hovercraft. Secondly, the markings are counterfeit. The President's hovercraft was being repaired in Thirteen, at the time this picture was taken. We are proceeding on the assumption that someone wants very badly, to convince people that the President killed the Capitol's children and the Mockingjay's kid sister. It might be an ally of Snow. It might be someone entirely different. Whoever it is, has a lot of resources at their disposal. The one resource not at their disposal, were the lives of forty medics. Primrose Everdeen surrendered their lives by following Ryan."

Paylor continued. "I learned a hard lesson in the Battle of Eight. They killed all but four of Portia Talbot's medics, because stupidly I trusted them not to blow up Panem's only liquid oxygen factory, since most of their missiles require liquid oxygen to blast off. I put the hospital in a warehouse on the factory grounds. Portia's patients had all the oxygen they needed. But the Capitol did blow it up, in order to get at the hospitalized rebel wounded, the medics who were treating them, and the Mockingjay, who brought them hope and moral support. Sixty medics burnt to death. Portia and the others would have died, had she not gone out to see what Command sent her."

"Here, twenty-two medics obeyed their orders, which were to wait for my orders. I was not going to order them to approach the Presidential Palace any closer, until we could get a Buffalo or two to provide cover. A Buffalo's magnetometer would have detected the approach of a cloaked hovercraft and would have shot it down with fifty-caliber rounds, before it dropped any bombs. Ryan and Everdeen stepped outside the chain of command, fifteen infantry soldiers and forty-one medics followed, and they all became history."

"Which brings us to our common dilemma. I could criticize the late Primrose Everdeen for disobeying orders. Likewise, Ryan. Those who understand why we bother to follow a chain of command, will see the problem. She led, the others followed, they formed a big cluster of fuckups who all got killed at once. The rest of the population will defend the cluster fuckup because they see Primrose as a hero who risked her own life, to save lives. Although they might go along with blaming Ryan for starting it. Unfortunately, Ryan is dead and there's no one else to courts-martial".

"Plutarch is playing a very dangerous game with this, and the President says I have to go along with his lead. Prim's to be depicted as a pure hero, right out of a be-good-and-get-rich novel by Horatio Alger, who wrote lots of them and died poor. The Capitol are evil buggers who killed their own human shields. Exactly how they ordered the attack, and where the killer plane crew went, is to remain an unsolved mystery when the war crimes trials conclude, unless, of course, Snow actually gave the orders and we prove that.

"Meanwhile, we do not see why this happened. We don't know whose idea it was, to put a lot of wounded children in front of the south gate. We don't know who flew that hovercraft. I'm pretty sure that if Snow had ordered it in, the pilot would have used the kids as human shields, and fired antitank rockets at the tanks on the north. Gray had his tankers all there, exposed. My special service force would have hesitated to down the hovercraft, because the wreckage would kill the children below. The hovercraft would have wrecked our tanks. And maybe Snow would have escaped in it. This way, nobody escaped. The human shields got killed. We marched in and captured Snow alive. But we do not see what the bombing accomplished nor why it was done. Conceivably it is part of a plot to break Snow out of prison later. Perhaps the video we just saw, will be broadcast by hacking into our network, and Plutarch Heavensbee will be accused of a coverup. But that would only wreck the President's credibility. It won't persuade anyone to stop Snow's hanging. It could just as easily be part of something else entirely."

"General, I appreciate your relief at not having to courts-martial Primrose Everdeen for that Charlie Foxtrot at the Palace. It is hard to take, that she didn't follow orders and got forty soldiers killed, who followed her, ma'am. Also there was no excuse for not asking you to detail some troops to search for mutts and remains in the tunnel where Finnick was killed. If someone had gotten killed because the water main wasn't shut off, it would be on us, that we caused or contributed to it, Ma'am."

The General pulled her cap out from her epaulet and unrolled it as she spoke. I got mine out of my belt, just in case she made me salute her.

"Mike, I'd like it if you would impress the importance of following the chain of command at all times, when on duty, upon your personnel. You are going to hunt these mutts where they are. And that's likely in rubble and underground. You're going to have to dig them out with satchel charges on occasion. So I am detailing the Seventh Engineers to do the digging. Also some Buffalo Soldiers to provide fire support and transport. Hawthorne will spearhead that. If something gets chewed up by lizard mutts, I can replace a run-flat tank tire but not a soldier's head. So, armored infantry for fire support."

"I take it from Jacob Talbot's report, despite his best efforts to say as little as possible, that the force of lizard mutts under this city is sizable. They devoured every mutt carcass that Plutarch's Squad 451 killed, and the more they killed, the more kept coming. No trace of our dead are left in that tunnel and no trace of mutts, either. It happened fast, because my own Buffalo column was on scene six hours later, we stepped out to check for survivors, and none of us smelled the rosy-garlicky odor of decomposing mutts.

"At maximum, a lizard mutt can't eat more than one-fifth its weight in one feeding. How does a horse doctor like me know that?"

"I know about animal anatomy. Some snake species can swallow large animals because their skin can stretch. Lizard mutt hide does not stretch. One-tenth would be a safer number. One-twentieth actually sounds reasonable. So we have to plan there are at least twenty live lizard mutts, for every lizard mutt that Squad 451 killed. That's a lot of lizard mutts. They live somewhere. They feed somewhere. Someone kept them alive while waiting for a reason to deploy them. And they shit someplace. The Capitol isn't that big...find where mutt shit odor is strongest, it's a safe bet that the mutts live there. So follow the stink trail back to its source, and you found who bred the damned things."

Paylor shoved her fist into the cap and stretched the fabric. This would keep it the proper shape, when she pulled it on. I did likewise.

"In a few weeks there will be a speedy and public trial of Coriolanus Snow, followed most likely by his hanging. We knew he needed killing, the day we signed up for this fight. The trial is to set an example, that no one should be punished, when there's no proof of their guilt, and punishing people for things they didn't do is plain stupid, because nobody learns to improve their behavior, until they are told what to change."

"The image I do not want broadcast to all the districts, when that trial ends, is of five thousand lizard mutts devouring the hangman and my army, while Snow escapes on a pink-and-chartreuse glider driven by Caesar Flickerman and pulled by two winged purple unicorns, and Plutarch Heavensbee stands in front of the camera slack-jawed, with his thumb up his rectum, watching it happen. Because Plutarch with his thumb up his rectum, is a sight that no one should ever have to see. If that dog needs a good worming, he can damned well do it himself in private. Not on television."

Paylor set the cap on her desk, next to the holo. I was off the hook and did not owe her a salute. I could see Hawthorne struggling not to laugh at Paylor's vivid sendup.

"You have command of those units for one week. I want daily situation reports. We need results, Colonel. Is that clear?"

"Crystal, General."

"Now go eat your sandwich before Spring comes. You're making me hungry."


	3. Chapter 3: Paylor in Command

Hawthorne was grinning as we left General Paylor's office. "So where do we start, sir?"

I thought a moment. "Is Paylor going to speak again this month? That was more words than she's ever uttered to me!"

"Actually, sir, she's a chatterbox amongst her staff. She only gets quiet when she's really pissed. Which is how she was yesterday, sir."

"Fair enough. So what I want to do, is put a team together here."

"Mind if we eat and meet, sir?"

"Let's.". I sat down to chow on that turkey sandwich. Hawthorne grabbed a biscuit and a bowl of some kind of stew.

"This tastes like smoked turkey. And I don't recognize the flavor."

"It's pecan wood, sir. They grow wild in District Ten. Folks smoke all sorts of meat with it there."

"And there's some spice to it, too."

"That's sheepolay pepper. They pick the peppers, sir, then they dry them and smoke them with the pecan wood. The General's family in Ten are in the meat business, and they made sure we got plenty of smoked meat. When I was on the march with General Gray, all we had was corned beef from some ranch in Ten that had a big pile of soda niter from an old fertilizer factory that blew up ages ago. Beef soaked in brine and soda niter turns red. The stuff didn't spoil but it got a little boring to eat. "

"How'd you get transferred to Paylor's command?"

"I got wounded, sir, and sent to Seven to heal up. Lieutenant Jackson, who drove you in this morning, was wounded too. We went through reconditioning together, and Paylor needed armored infantry to occupy Two. Several more wounded from the Appian Way campaign were in reconditioning, and Jackson persuaded them all to volunteer for it. Jackson came up with our name, The Buffalo Soldiers, in the Appian Way campaign, and it stuck. I became squadron commander, and captain of Troop A, until we get more vehicles and train more drivers. Also, the General recommended me for promotion to Commander, so First Squadron, Buffalo Soldiers, will have a commander in command, sir."

"Who's commanding the regiment?"

"That would be Commander Talbot, sir. His intelligence unit is becoming Second Squadron, Buffalo Soldiers. A lot of people he recruited in District Two, can drive. So Second Squadron has two missions, logistics and situational awareness. Now that we govern the whole country, our drivers haul everywhere and meet a lot of people, so they will help us keep a running list of people's complaints and what's being done about them. The people in the Districts aren't used to sharing information with the government, because in the Snow days, the Capitol was looking for ways to take more from the Districts and leave us with less, and the less they knew, the better off we were. But General Paylor made a point of helping anyone who helped us, and the word spread, sir."

"I noticed. She has a way with words. Building trust, where there was none, sounds like a good use for a bunch of unemployed spies. They might prevent problems from starting. If this government listens to the people and actually helps, people won't see the problems we grew up with."

"Sir?"

"When I was a kid in Nine, every problem we had, the only way to fix it was to overthrow Snow, then figure out how to fix it ourselves. It will feel strange in the Districts, to have a government that actually works for folks, instead of against them."

"One idea I suggested to General Paylor, was that we get some idled hoverplanes and crews, and have two squadrons that do air transportation and support. If a bridge washes out somewhere, we can keep vital supplies moving. If we have a mutt outbreak or something, we arm the planes and go mutt hunting. Otherwise we do logistics, sir."

"What did the general say?"

"She asked me if I'd put the unit together, sir."

"And you said you would?"

"Yes, sir, and that's when she recommended me for promotion, sir."

I began piecing together what Paylor the horse doctor must have intended. She wants Hawthorne in line to command this air mobile armored infantry regiment, meaning she wants him to make Colonel and run it, whenever Levias Talbot retires. They will be first responders to any District that asks the Army for help. They'll have a network of Talbot's veteran spies around the districts, keeping track of little problems before they blow up into big problems. Chances are, if a government worker gets too lazy to work or starts acting surly to the District people instead of giving good service, Talbot's spies will pass the word that we need to fire the bum. And they feed themselves in the woods. And they know how to fight, if required. So the preventive medicine Paylor is practicing here is a little sneaky. Basically, she leaves Cassius Gray and his cronies in place, but puts the best troops she's got, into this regiment Hawthorne dreamed up, that will actually respond to any emergency the government faces. Gray can hang around until he wants to retire, but won't have any serious duties at which to screw up. Any emergency that a District needs the Army to help fix, actually gets Hawthorne's Buffalo Soldiers because they will arrive first. Brilliant plan. My appreciation for General Paylor just increased. She gets the job done, in spite of what Plutarch, Coin, or Gray might foul up. Coin will overthink a problem instead of asking for help. Gray will underestimate a problem because he's clueless about the complexities. Plutarch Heavensbee will milk a problem for publicity. All three are skilled at explaining failure. Hawthorne's record speaks for itself. He came, he saw, and he got the job done. Repeatedly. Just like Paylor, only taller, I thought.

"So Paylor sees the Buffalo Soldiers as point-of-the-spear?"

"Yes she does, sir. Buffalo Soldiers move on.". Hawthorne was grinning.

"But you don't have any engineers."

"Actually, sir, my plan is to split up the Seventh Engineers into three squadrons. Fourth Squadron will be an airborne unit who parachute, rapell, and use hoverplanes and hovercraft for hoisting and mountaineering. Fifth Squadron will have the heavy equipment and will move by truck or rail. And Headquarters Battalion will do the major equipment maintenance and support functions, sir."

"What does Jacob Talbot think of all that?"

"He says he's glad to get a few days off to go to jump school, but I think he also wants to give Paylor some time to cool off, sir."

"If he doesn't learn to feather properly he'll march home soaking wet, from his first jump, and he'll be more than just cool when he crawls out of the swamp. What did the General say to him, anyway?"

"Paylor had gotten a call from Captain Salmon, at the Third Engineers, about a fire they were trying to put out and a water main that had a leak. Salmon's kind of a hardass. He was with Col. Lewis at the Bridge, I've heard. So when Salmon gave us a second call a half hour later, asking for an artillery barrage to knock down some burning buildings he could bury with bulldozers to extinguish, because the water pressure was even lower and unusable, Paylor put Bellamy and me on it. Bellamy reports back that our bulldozers are gone. I get through to Jacob Talbot and he says, 'Wait two minutes '. And then calls back, asking if the water pressure is back on. I asked what the fuck he did, and he says he flooded a mutt tunnel by blowing a water main with a satchel charge, that he just turned off again at the gate valve. So let me guess, do you have all the bulldozers, too? And he asks how I knew about the dozers".

"I take it that General Paylor wasn't pleased with that news."

"I recall her asking Bellamy if he had any turpentine, for her neutering kit, sir".

"He should be glad she only wanted to castrate him, because in veterinary school, she also learned how to lobotomize brains."

"I agree, sir."

"I remember being shocked that you and Katniss Everdeen both found time to get in jump school in Thirteen. How are she and her mom holding up?"

"Not well, sir. Katniss Everdeen just got out of the hospital and reconditioning, fought her way to the Presidential Palace, watched Prim get killed. She doesn't say much. Neither does Mrs Everdeen, sir."

"It's rough to lose family. I lost my dad when we made a run for it, in Nine. The shitheads killed him. Somehow, I had the presence of mind to sit still and hang on to our only pair of night goggles, and made my way to Thirteen. They captured my mom. Levias Talbot sent me a note last month, that she was still alive in the Capitol, an Avox at the tribute training center. If I can catch up with his data, I'd like to look her up."

"I'll ask when I see him, sir."

"Thanks for that, Captain. "

"So who commands the squad you brought with you, sir?"

"Laecania Boggs is my class orderly sergeant from Thirteen. She graded your multiple choice exams, and I did the essay questions. She knows her way around our ordnance very well. Also is accustomed to laboratory work, as you remember. She kept the place humming while you and Beetee brainstormed. Her second is Lief-Corporal Talbot. Portia and Levias younger son. They both saw action with me, during the missile attack on Thirteen, you may recall. We were outside, the missiles hit, the recon hovercraft flew in to assess the damage, we brought them down with Beetee specials. They worked well together and know their stuff, so I got them both. The other eight grunts all worked in the lab in one capacity or other. I let Beetee pick them, because right now, they are his eyes, ears, and hands on the scene. I'm replaceable. They're replaceable. Beetee is a one of a kind asset. So is Portia Talbot. We are not about to put them anywhere that they might stumble over a live pod or get eaten by mutts. We send soldiers who've worked well with them."

"Do you need them all in the field, sir?"

"I want to have half of them in camp and half in the field. They'll rotate. The unit resting up in camp, need a room with a table and chairs, and good lighting, also a data feed back to Thirteen that will accommodate 3D video. I want them examining the mutt remains we brought in, preserving samples for shipment to Thirteen. The rest deploy with two Buffalo crews and go mutt hunting. How's the supply of Pave Pat Blue here?"

"Plenty of it, sir."

"Good. I brought two dozen cans with me, freshly packed. We'll swap those out with your oldest stock. I want the tankers equipped with three cans apiece, and three apiece for each of my squad. That's eighteen total cans. Everybody deploys with a gas mask. The Buffalo has great air filtration. But if it takes damage and leaks, I need everyone masked up and alive, not twitching and gagging and hunting for the atropine. Also I brought fresh atropine. Just in case someone's gas mask leaks. Swap that out as well, so we use up Paylor's old stock and replace it with fresh. Six atropine injectors for each soldier, in case a mask fails. Or some asshole shoots us while we're poisoning mutts. Or some civilians inhale a whiff of Pave Pat Blue and start twitching and gagging. Better prepared, than not. "

The kid is a natural. He read everything he could get his hands on, when he first got to Thirteen. That was after he did the survivors of the Capitol firebombing of Twelve a solid favor. As Boggsy explained it, "Gale Hawthorne is the reason why there are survivors of the firebombing of Twelve". After looking at the recon pictures, I agreed. There's no way anything survived firebombing that intense, if it had stayed until the hovercraft attacked. And Hawthorne was the only person in the whole district, to figure out the attack was coming. He managed that, with no military training. Now that he got some training and some combat experience, he's one of the best we've got.

"Sir, if we're done planning, I need to see Lt Jackson about some spare parts, and then we can move out. Fourteen hundred good for you, sir?"

"All right, let's saddle up at fourteen hundred."

Hawthorne showed me an empty room for my squad to use as a staging area. I left Laecania Boggs in command to get the place squared away, then met with Captain Bellamy, who was commanding Headquarters Battalion, Buffalo Soldiers. The guy had a good head for logistics, and seemed to have a photographic memory for details. We sorted out the stock of Pave Pat Blue, a wonderful concoction I worked on once, that delivered a burst of Sarin gas along with some stabilized ozone, trapped on fumed silicon dioxide. The stuff was packaged in cans. A soldier would pop the can open, the contents would mix, and a blue cloud would form as the ozone slowly desorbed from the silica. When the blue color is gone, all the ozone is liberated, and there's just enough ozone to completely destroy the Sarin gas in fifteen minutes. What's left is phosphate, which is fertilizer, and ordinary sand. Meanwhile, anything with nerves and muscles, that inhaled the Sarin, forgets how the hell to breathe and drops dead waiting for oxygen to arrive via the bloodstream.

Bellamy seemed familiar with Pave Pat Blue. He wasn't from Thirteen. So I asked him about it.

"I was supply officer for the Black Devils, sir. They used five hundred cans of it to fight off a tracker jacker attack at the Bridge, during the Appian Way campaign, and it worked very well, sir."

Which explained why he had a red arrow in his ribbon row. Everybody who was in Col Gus Lewis' regiment got awarded one. The hundred and fifty who survived, actually wear them on occasion. The other five hundred fifty are buried at Lewis' Bridge, where they fell, holding the damned bridgehead until General Gray finally reached it. It's an ugly dammed story of a complete cluster fuckup, a mission badly conceived and a plan badly executed, in my view. Boggsy put it a little more briefly...Eight days into the battle, his take on General Gray's performance, was "If there's a way to fuck it up, Gray will find one". I know better than to ask the grunts who were actually there. It is a subject they don't discuss.

So I took Bellamy to be a bit more talkative than most.

"How many tracker jackers hit your guys?", I asked.

"Probably half a million, sir."

"All killed? "

"Yes, sir, every tracker jacker that attacked, died of Sarin poisoning. Another two hundred thousand or so, burned to death in a pre-emptive strike the night before, sir."

I decided not to press my luck. Like most guys who fought for Gus Lewis at the bridgehead, Bellamy will not say much about the fight.

Tracker jackers weren't much use in the winter. If they flew more than a minute or so, the cold put them to sleep until Spring. If we find a mutt lab hidden here, it might have millions of tracker jackers waiting for us. And then there are lizard mutts, which we're here to wipe out, I thought.

Just then, I heard the roar of Buffalo engines rolling up.

Captain Hawthorne entered the room, hatless, and nodded at us. Laecania Boggs was directly behind him. I wondered if they would put their caps on and have to salute me, if it were raining. Then I wondered if I would remember how to return a damned salute.

Bellamy gestured. "Your Pave Pat Blue and atropine is right there, Gale, along with twenty boxes of fifty caliber rounds, four satchel charges, and ten tubes of Xyex".

"Thanks, Mister Bellamy."

Laecania had our squad grabbing up the cargo and hauling it out. I spotted Lindsay Woolsey and Johanna Mason also coming in and carrying the munitions out.

"Ready, Colonel?", asked Hawthorne.

"Let's move out.", I said.


End file.
